Neddy's Palaver

April 19th is Primrose Day.

My father was born on Primrose Day, April 19th, 1901, at Forest Hill, London, England. For more about Primrose Day see my explanation at Neddy’s Nook on the Net.

Upon the death of the beloved British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), on April nineteenth, 1881, Primrose Day was instituted in his honor, as the English primrose was his favorite flower. Queen Victoria sent bouquets of primroses to his funeral according to a contempory account; The coffin lies on its bier in an alcove leading out of the modest hall of Hughenden Manor. But of its material, one might almost say of its dimensions, nothing can be seen. It is literally one mass of floral beauty. Here are wreaths from every member of the Royal Family in England bouquets of primroses sent by the Queen, with an inscription attached to them, saying that they came from Osborne Hill, and that they are of the sort which Lord Beaconsfield loved. Two years later, a bronze statue of Lord Beaconsfield was erected at Parliament Square, and it became customary to decorate it with primroses every year on the anniversary of his death. Ofttimes at Easter the woodlands of England are seen carpeted with wild primroses.
~ Primrose Day — April 19th

Northern Virginia - I took this photograph yesterday at Woodlawn Plantation.

These lovely, seemingly wild flowers are called “Hardy Begonias“. I call them “Wild Begonias” as they have truly gone wild in my garden and I am enjoying their lovely, almost white blossoms now. They love shady spots in the garden or woodland and reseed themselves year after year, so once started you have to keep them under control. I find them so beautiful, that I just let them settle wherever they choose. They begin blooming in September when summer’s flowers are beginning to fade. I found them at Old Londontown, Maryland, some years ago. They are truly hardy, supposedly up to zone 9, and they can tolerate a lot of shade and still bloom, although the deeper the shade, the shorter the plants. They get quite tall, sometimes about three feet if exposed to sunshine. They produce bubils so if you don’t pull them out of the ground, the clump will get wider every year. They die back to the ground in winter and come up in the spring. During the summer when the begin to sprout they display their begonia leaves. The species name is “Begonia Grandis”. Their pink blooms appear at the end of summer. The flowers rise about another six to eight inches over the foilage. This is when the bulbils form. You will find them in the crook where the leaf attaches to the main stem. Let them fall to the ground and you can collect them and scatter about to increase your clump for next year or to transplant.

Here is another IMAGE of Hardy Begonias along a brick wall from In My Garden.